Forest Fire
by Cate Wolfe
Summary: A seven-year-old elf gets lost in the garden— and ends up in Mirkwood. After hitting her head hard enough to forget her address, she has to learn Sindarin, get used to the name her caretakers give her, and figure out why nobody likes to look at her hair. And maybe, once she's big enough, she'll be able to find her way home. No romance, slightly AU. Updates when college allows.
1. Prologue (Amnesia)

PROLOGUE

Amnesia

The trees were so _wild._

I did like wild trees on occasion, but the trees here were supposed to be nice tidy trees with stone paths between. Maybe I had wandered out of the garden during that dizzy spell.

My opinion on wild trees, I decided, was mostly dependent on whether Mama and Papa were with me. And on whether the sun was up. Mama and Papa were not with me, and the sun was not up, so I did not like wild trees at the moment.

Where _were_ Mama and Papa? They were supposed to come get me once they were done talking to all the other grown-ups. I shivered. It was getting cold.

Maybe I had gotten lost. I sat down on the cold dirt and shivered some more. Mama and Papa would find me soon. They just had to.

Everything was really quiet, but sometimes I thought I could hear howling, or scratchy sounds like something strange walking through the forest. Were there wolves in this forest? Or worse, those horrible not-wolf things in the stories…

The scratching sound started again. What could it be? Another elf? A squirrel? A spider?

Ordinary spiders made no noise at all, so if the scratchy noise was a spider it had to be a really big spider. Had Ungoliant come back? Those were the _most_ frightening stories— the real thing had to be even worse!

I had to warn Mama and Papa! I leapt to my feet, making sure to brush all the clods of dirt off my dress. I started to run, but my foot slipped on a rock and I fell.

As I scrambled to my feet, brushing the dirt off my dress _again,_ I remembered that I did not know which way Mama and Papa were. I turned in a circle, but could not see any end to the forest.

Wait! If I climbed the tallest tree, I could see over the rest of the trees, and I could see the lights where all the people were! That would work. I ran to a tree, and jumped up to catch hold of the lowest branch, but it was too short.

But! Over there was another tree, and it was littler and younger, and I could reach _its_ branches.

I climbed to the top of it, but the top of the little young tree was still far too low to see over the old tall trees.

But to my left there was a branch that came oh-so-close to my little tree, and perhaps I could leap to it, for it was attached to an old, tall tree, and I could climb up it and see all the way home.

Slowly I walked out close as possible to the large branch— the little tree's bark hurt my feet— and I breathed deeply, deeply as I could, and jumped—

And fell—

And fell—

And fell— and then darkness.

Fin


	2. Chapter One (A Kind of Hospital)

CHAPTER ONE (IN THE HOSPITAL)

So then—

 _Yes,_ I know I said I couldn't remember exactly what happened, but I made some educated guesses to start the story effectively! Nobody wants to hear a story that starts with somebody waking up and not remembering anything.

 _Thank_ you. See, he agrees with me.

So _then,_ I woke up.

I was in a room. All the walls were made of some sort of wood that was neither light nor dark.

I sat up and looked around. I was in a bed far too big for me. My hair was still in a braid, but it had gotten loose and fuzzy.

Some grown-up was in the room, behind something like a portable wall that looked like it was woven out of lots of little strips of wood.

"Excuse me," I said to the grown-up, "do you know where my parents are?"

The grown-up stood straight up quicker than anything I had ever seen. Her hair was brown (which I had seen before), but it was a strange, greyish brown, like dirt covered with a film of dust. Not at all like the redder browns I was used to. She babbled incoherently about something— it _almost_ sounded like she was saying words and sentences and things like that, but not quite. Like a baby trying to learn to talk.

Maybe I had just startled her. "Excuse me," I said again, "do you know where my parents are?"

She kept babbling.

Evidently she had been damaged in the head. I would have to go find someone who could talk if I wanted to get back to my parents.

I got out of bed and went over to the door. My head hurt a little, but not enough to worry about. Most likely it would go away after I found my parents and drank some water.

The grown-up babbled more quickly and loudly, coming toward me like she was going to pick me up.

I pulled the door open and ran through— something was very wrong with that woman. She shouted, and chased after me. I ran faster.

There were people outside, and they all looked surprised to see me. I ran through the crowd, through all the little spaces-between-people that were just wide enough for me. Surely the grown-up would have to slow down to get through without knocking anybody over.

I ran, and ran, and whenever I had to choose between a big room and a small room I chose the big room. There would be more people there, and eventually somebody would see why I was running and help me.

Soon I was in a very big room indeed. The people were more spread out here, since there was so much space, so I just started running in the closest thing to a straight line I could. I turned my head around to see how close the grown-up was— too close! I kept running, and—

Ran into something, and fell down.

The something was another grown-up. He was taller than the one that had been chasing me, but not as tall as my papa. He started talking, but said nothing I could understand. A feeling of congestive dread started to settle in the back of my throat— it sounded exactly like that mad-woman's babbling.

The grown-up that had been chasing me caught up to me, and started talking to the taller one. She sounded almost like she was apologizing for something. The taller one said something back, and they went on like that for a little while.

They were looking at me, which I did not like. I started slowly backing away from them.

The shorter grown-up made an angry face and grabbed my arm.

"Get away!" I shouted, and I tried to kick her in the legs with both of my feet at once.

It did not work. I fell down again on the hard floor, pulling her down with me. She let go a little, though, so I kicked her again to make her let go all the way.

That did not work either. She stood up, angrily, and started dragging me back to the room where I had woken up, hissing at me in her babbling not-language.

I grabbed her arm with my free hand, and pulled my face closer to _her_ hand. I would bite her hand, she would drop me, and I would run away to find some people who could talk.

"Stop," said the taller grown-up, with a strange accent.

"You can talk!" I said. The shorter grown-up dropped me, and I fell down _again._ She still looked angry, but there was some shock mixed in now, and she took a few steps away and stood there.

"Thought thou I could not?" asked the taller grown-up. Now I knew what he sounded like! He sounded like an old person being formal. Though there was another accent too. A little like a sailor's accent, maybe, but I had only ever heard that once or twice.

"Yes," I said. "Who are you? Why did you not talk before now if you could?"

"In thy hearing I have said much," he said, "to answer thy second question."

"It only counts as talking if you say real words," I said. "But could you answer the first question before we talk about the second?"

"I am the king," he said.

That was a lie and I knew it. The king came over to dinner sometimes, because my papa knew him, so I had seen him. The king was taller than this grown-up, and his hair was a different color, and he talked differently, and all sorts of other things. I said all that, and then said, "...and if you knew who I was, you would have said something different. My grandmama is very important, you know, so that makes me important too."

"What is thy grandmother's name?"

"Grandmama, of course! I just told you."

"Dost thou know thy parents' names, then?"

"Mama and Papa!"

He went very quiet for a moment. "Dost thou know thine own name, at the least?"

"Mama and Papa call me Meldë," I said.

"Is that thy name?"

"Probably," I said. "Other people call me other things, but Mama and Papa always call me that."

"What things do other people call you?"

I shrugged. "Too many things to remember. I could tell you about Mama and Papa's horses, though! They said they would find a lovely red one for me when I am old enough, just like Papa's, and that way all four of us will match, and—"

He had stared blankly into the distance as I talked. After the part about me and Papa and Papa's red horse and my hypothetical red horse all matching, he said something short and angry in the babble-language, then switched back to real words to say, "That is enough. I thank thee for thy words."

"You are very welcome," I said, curtseying like Mama did, "but where are the other people who can talk? I have more words, and they are no use without someone to hear them! And understand them, of course. Words are no use if nobody understands them, you know, and—"

"Lindwen can speak," he said, waving a hand at the short, angry grown-up. "Near all in this kingdom can."

I giggled, and now that someone who could understand me was around I said what I had thought before. "Near all? They talk like babies."

"How so?" he asked quietly.

"They just babble," I said, "like babies trying to—"

"I see," he said, even though I had not finished. He was staring very hard at something to the left of my head. He almost sounded angry again. I turned around to see what he was looking at, but somebody must have taken it away, because I only saw people like the ones that had been walking past the whole time, and he had not gotten angry at _them._

But he _was_ a grown-up, and they never made sense. He had interrupted me three times, which was rude, but if I pointed it out he would act as if _I_ were the rude one. "Thank you for seeing," I said, because it seemed like a good thing to say. I did not say anything else after that. I was hoping he would go away.

The angry grown-up had walked up behind me while I was talking to the grown-up who could talk but was not the king, and she grabbed my hand again, far more tightly than she really needed to. I twisted my face up tight and put my teeth together to keep from shouting, because I did not want her to know what I was planning to do, which was bite her hand and kick her legs and run until I found some _sensible_ people who could talk.

The grown-up who could talk but was not the king said something in the babble-language, and the angry grown-up let go of my hand enough that it stopped hurting.

I thought about this. Even though the grown-up who could talk was not the king, the people who could not talk must have thought he was a _little_ important. The angry grown-up did not seem like the sort who would do something somebody told her to do unless that person was important. Of course he could not be _very_ important, or I would have seen him talking to Papa or Grandmama.

Biting a grown-up's hand, kicking her, and running away did not sound like the sort of thing _any_ grown-up would like, and it sounded even less like the sort of thing a slightly important grown-up who thought he was the king would like. I would wait until he was out of sight before biting the angry grown-up's hand, kicking her, and running away.

I waited. The angry grown-up took me one way, and the grown-up who could talk but was not the king walked the other way. In a few moments I could not see him at all, even though he was taller than most of the people who could not talk.

I bit the angry grown-up's hand and kicked her legs. She screamed, and she dropped my hand, and I ran.

Fin

A/N

I started this story about four years ago, as my Silmarillion-obsessed younger self's experiment to see if a red-haired captain of the guard could be explained into a predominantly silver-haired or dusty-brown-haired Mirkwood, as I had always imagined it before the Hobbit movies were released. I could explain it in the end, and after a few overhauls to make the plot less complicated I had written what you see today. This story does contain Silmarillion and HoME lore, but understanding of those should not be necessary to understand the story.


	3. Chapter Two (Escape)

CHAPTER TWO

Escape

I ran, ducking between people and turning left and right into different hallways to confuse the angry grown-up. Sometimes I would find stairs going up, and I went up those stairs. Going up all the stairs might make the angry grown-up tired, or at least I hoped it would, and eventually I would get to the roof, or a high window where I could get out of the building and climb down the walls to find some normal people.

I ran through halls with wood-colored walls, halls with white walls, halls with blue walls. Halls with lots of people, halls with no people, halls with a few very bored-looking people. But I did not stop running, even though my legs hurt and my head hurt and my throat hurt from breathing so quickly. If I stopped running, I would be in a hall long enough for people to notice me.

Halls were _small,_ that was the problem. I needed to get into a big room, so the people would be spread out too far to bother themselves with me.

Ah! There was a door over there, and it looked quite big enough for me to run through without being noticed.

I ran. The door got closer… closer… closer…

Through! I was through. And… there was a massive room, and a bigger door at the end of it— But there were _trees_ through that one! Surely I would be able to get away once I was in the forest.

I ran. There must have been hundreds of people in the big room, and every one of them turned their heads to look at me as I ran by. Did I look so strange?

I did vaguely remember looking more like Father (and, by that, Grandmother) than I looked like anybody else back home, but nobody _stared_ about it.

Oh, no— Somebody was running up behind me— not just staring, but chasing me. I ran faster, so fast that I nearly lost all my breath. My chest hurt from gulping in air with every jarring step.

The new door got closer, and with it the trees, and outside, and freedom, and people who could _talk—_

But the angry grown-up was surely getting closer, and I was getting tired. As soon as I had found a town of normal people I thought I would just about fall down and sleep for three days.

I kept running, and running, and running, and just when I was starting to think there was nothing else in life _but_ running— I was out! The air smelled a good deal nicer, and when I looked up I could see little bits and pieces of sky between the leaves.

When I looked back, though, I could see the angry grown-up, and quite a few other people she must have convinced to help her. They looked angry too, and were probably less tired. I kept running.

This went on for what felt like a very long time but was probably not that long. Every few moments I looked back to see what the angry grown-up and the people she had convinced to help her were doing, and nearly every time they had gotten closer.

The frequent back-looking was my downfall— I tripped. And fell. Down. I might have hit my head again, now that I think about it. It would surely explain why everything for a while after that got so fuzzy, and furthermore it would explain why I fainted.

I woke up in the room whose walls were made of some sort of wood that was neither light nor dark.

I sat up, and immediately flopped back down again. I shut my eyes tight, but the spinning colors just got brighter.

My head hurt terribly— You know, I really think I had hit it again when I fell. That explains a lot of things.

For example, it explains why everything looked so hazy, and why there always seemed to be a cluster of concerned grown-ups. I did not see the angry grown-up during that time— probably a good thing. Even through the haze I might have tried to tackle her.

But eventually the world got un-hazy, and I was stuck listening to all sorts of jabbering I could not understand.

I tried to learn it. There was nothing else to do. Some words were easy to figure out— water, food, time to sleep.

But when all the grown-ups started talking more quickly than I had ever heard, and they gave me back my party dress, I had no words to ask what was going on.

Fin

A/N

A question has come up in the reviews: Is the main character of this story Tauriel? To which I say yes and no. Yes, she is heavily inspired by Tauriel in appearance and profession; indeed, the story never would have existed if Tauriel had not. But my main character (who will get a name soon, making discussions like these much less tedious) has a very different personality, is not Silvan, and will never be romantically interested in either Legolas or Kili. So in the end, I say more no than yes. I hope this has been helpful.


	4. Chapter Three (The King)

Chapter Three

The King

I was at least glad to have _my_ dress back. The other dresses they had given me were as crudely sewn as they were roughly woven, and even if I liked dark brown for dresses I did not like the suspicion that a thousand other girls my size must have worn something before I did. My dress was _mine,_ and no one else's, and it felt nice to wear.

The angry grown-up had come back, which I was _not_ glad about. She looked angrier than ever, and when she grabbed my arm to drag me wherever she wanted me to go, the bruises she had given me last time started hurting again. Furthermore she walked so quickly that I had to run to keep up.

I considered dropping to the floor and making her carry me, but that was very much something a baby would do. To that depth I would only descend under truly dire circumstances.

Eventually we got to a very large door and stopped. After an incomprehensible conversation between the door's guards and the angry grown-up, the guards opened the door and let us in.

Inside the room were quite a lot of people. The angry grown-up hissed something at me that I could not understand, dropping my arm only to grab my shoulder tighter than a wolf's bite.

Now I would have bruises there too. I would have shouted at her if so many people had not been watching.

A faint memory wormed its way out of my head. _Don't look at them,_ I remembered somebody whispering. _Eyes forward, head up, just keep walking._

Whoever had put that into my head, it was far better than nothing. I straightened out my back from the defensive curl that the angry grown-up always inspired, stretched out my neck as far as it would go, and looked down to the end of the room, directly into the eyes of—

The grown-up who thought he was the king.

I sighed through my nose.

The angry grown-up started walking. I spent a few steps stumbling, but eventually figured out the right way to walk to keep up with her— not quickly enough, though, to avoid everybody seeing how bad I seemed to be at walking.

Getting to the end seemed to take forever, but I did not even glance to the sides where at least two dozen people sat watching. The grown-up who thought he was the king was at the end, of course, sitting on a chair that was probably supposed to look like a throne. There was a lady there, too, on exactly the same kind of chair. Standing on the ground was a very nervous-looking fellow holding a book.

"Hello," I said, because none of them seemed like they were going to say anything.

"Hello," said the grown-up who thought he was the king; he still had the strange accent.

"Is there any particular reason," I asked, "why I have been brought here?"

"Fascinating!" said the nervous fellow. "Absolutely fascinating!" He turned around and talked at the couple in the chairs for a few moments.

"If something is fascinating I would like you to tell me about it," I said. "Now that you have told them I feel very left out."

"You speak it like a native!" he said. "No stumbling whatsoever over the stranger bits of grammar— quite a thing to see. Or hear, rather— or maybe behold, which works for both."

"Well!" I said. "I never heard anybody speak any other way before I had the misfortune of coming here. I should hope I do not stumble."

"Where do you come from, then?"

"Father and Mother and Grandmother and I live in a house with big walls a day's ride away from the city," I said. "And a few other people who do not like the city have built houses near ours, but none of them are as pretty, and none of them have stables as big as ours. Father and Mother have two horses each, you know, and Grandmother has _sixteen,_ but she only rides two of them because she says she's keeping the rest for some people who took a long journey and are coming back any day now, and—"

"I suppose you like horses," said the nervous fellow. "But tell me, do you know the name of the city of which you spoke?"

"No!" I said. "Why would I want to? Of course it is a very pretty city from a distance, but once one gets up close the people are very unpleasant."

He looked very unhappy about this, and turned around to communicate with the people on the chairs again.

"What is that language that you are all speaking?" I asked. "If no one knows anything else I will either have to learn it or get out of here very quickly."

He seemed at this point to be existing in a constant state of unhappiness. "It is called Sindarin by most," he said. "I suppose you will have to learn it— unless you go to the places where Silvan is still used, but then you will have to learn that. Unless you know it already?"

"I hardly know what any of _this_ means," I said. "But tell me, why will I _have_ to learn your language? As soon as my parents know where I am they will come get me.

"I do not think they know where you are," he said.

"They are _looking,"_ I said. "And once they have found me I will be able to get out of here. Now will you please get to the point of why that _person—"_ here I pointed at the angry grown-up— "has dragged me all the way down here?"

Now he looked rattled as well as unhappy. "Well," he said, "we have had people going to all the elven settlements asking if anyone has lost a child about your age, and—"

"My parents said yes, so I get to go home?"

"No," he said. "We could not find anybody. You will have to stay here."

I would not believe it. "I will not," I said, crossing my arms. "They must not have looked hard enough. Our town is not a very big one, of course."

"I am sure they looked very hard," he said. "In any case it is not up to you. You will stay here."

"I will leave," I said, "and you need not even think about me ever again. No doubt you will all be much happier."

This apparently shocked him back into his native language, and he chattered back and forth with the grown-ups on the chairs for a while before turning back to me. "Leave!" he said. "Small as you are! Absolutely not. A common wolf would bowl you over before the spiders even noticed you."

So this place was in the middle of a forest. Drat. "Hm," I said, in an attempt to save face. "I suppose I will stay a few years, then, if this place is so overrun with dangers."

"I surely hope you will!" said the translator— the king through him, technically, though the difference in their tones of voice made me think it was a loose kind of translation. "You should keep learning our language, and we will find someone for you to stay with in the meantime."

"After these past few weeks," I said, "I could be content with anything."

Fin


	5. Chapter Four (Ma'am)

Chapter Four

Ma'am

"Be good," said Lindwen as she dragged me along. "People here don't like children who bite them."

"I only bite people who are mean to me," I said, "so if I bite them you may be sure they deserved it."

The people who worked for the grown-up who thought he was the king had found a childless couple who was willing to keep me fed and clothed until I was grown. We might even, they hoped, end up liking each other.

"Some have not deserved it," she said, and dragged me along faster, near tearing my arm out of my shoulder.

"Slow down!" I shouted. "Is the fashion here for children to have their arms ripped off?"

"Don't shout so," she said, "somebody might hear." But she did, at least, slow down.

"This kind of thing," I informed her, "is why I am considering biting you again. Are you so mean to everybody?"

"I am only mean to people who are a nuisance to me," she said mockingly, "so if I am mean to them you may be sure they deserved it."

"Whatever did I do to make myself a nuisance?" I asked, my nose getting hot with indignation.

"You were born," she said, "and then you were found in the forest, and then the guards took pity on you, and then the master of the healers took pity on you, so then _she_ set me to the care of the most troublesome child in the world."

"None of that is my fault," I said.

She interrupted me. "And if you had not been born or found, then I would not have had to sit up seven days and seven nights waiting for you to wake up. And furthermore you would not have run away from me when I was only trying to help you, and you would not have bit me when I was only trying to take you back to your room. Or any of the times after that!"

"Well!" I said, and I would have told her why she was wrong, but she halted in front of a certain house's door and interrupted me again.

"Stop it," she said. "We are here, and if you do not make a good impression on these people you will be stuck with me for the foreseeable future, and I think neither of us would like that much."

I had even more to say about that, but she knocked on the door, and as much as I wanted to show her why she was wrong I wanted even more for these people to like me. I did not, as I am sure you will understand, want to be stuck with Lindwen.

A lady opened the door. She was shorter than Lindwen, and her face was thinner, but she had longer hair, and did not keep it in a braid like the healers usually did.

"Good morning, Gaeren," said Lindwen.

"Good morning," said the lady who must have been Gaeren. "Are you here from—" She stopped, and stared at the top of my head. "I suppose you are," she said absently.

"I hope your mind has not changed?"

"No, just…" She trailed off, still staring at me, but then looked back at Lindwen, her voice brightening. "Well! You must come in. I fear Naithion is not home, but his mind had not changed when he left this morning."

"Has harvest come early?" asked Lindwen, stepping into the house and pulling me with her. It was a small house, with a small main room, but when we were still outside I had seen signs that they had recently built another room onto the back.

"No," said Gaeren, "but we have had to replace some laborers, and have also had the good fortune to be able to hire more, so he thought it would be best to give our supervisors some help."

"That is glad news," said Lindwen, and she looked like she might have said more, but Gaeren said something before she had the chance.

"Does the child have a name?" she asked, periodically darting her eyes at the top of my head, and to the sides of it, but never at my eyes.

"Not yet," said Lindwen. "She remembers only an old pet-name, and we thought to leave the giving of new names to her caretakers."

"She is so quiet," said Gaeren. I bristled, and cast aside all my real parents' admonishments against interrupting, and would have proved her wrong but for Lindwen catching the direction of my thoughts and threatening silently to stomp on my foot.

"Yes," lied Lindwen, "and docile, too. You and Naithion should be able to handle her quite easily even without any experience in the matter."

Gaeren sighed at that last part. "That is good, I suppose— but wait. I had heard that she bit a caretaker of hers, soon after waking. To my ears, if you will forgive me, that speaks little of quietness, and even less of docility. No— it was more than once— but that is even worse—"

Lindwen forced out a laugh, drowning out the end of whatever Gaeren had been going to say. "Ah, children! You know how they are. Little better than animals when provoked, even by something that you or I would understand to be quite small."

"I beg your pardon!" I said, but the sheer amount of anger coursing through my veins turned it far too squeaky for anybody to take me seriously.

"We hardly mean it," said Gaeren, laughing a little. It sounded rather patronizing, or at least I thought so.

Lindwen laughed too, and asked, "Will all be well if I leave now? I have other duties, and must attend to them…" She had, I realized, been slowly edging toward the door for a good part of the conversation. Though she started out close enough to me that her threats of foot-stomping were clearly not vain, she now stood a good two paces away from me.

"Oh," said Gaeren. "Yes, yes. You can go."

She did, and hissed into the air as she left: "Good _riddance,"_ which I do not think I was supposed to hear.

"Hm," said Gaeren. "You are so quiet…"

"Oh," I said, "I was only being quiet because Lindwen was still around. She dislikes me, you see, though I have no idea why, and—"

"I will call you Tíniel," she said. "One name is as good as any other, _I_ think, and Naithion thinks so too. And you had better have a name sooner rather than later."

"Would you not use it, please?" I asked. The name sat wrong, and the meaning sat wrong, and though I could not remember my real name I was sure it must have been better than this new one.

She frowned. "Perhaps you will like better the one my husband devises. But even if you are not truly a quiet girl I see no reason why you should dislike the name. My name means nothing to me, and Naithion's means nothing to him, and nobody here thinks anything of their names, really. They are nothing but ways to call people and not get the whole clearing."

"I think something of this name," I said. "Maybe your husband will come up with a better one. Even if you resort to shouting in my general direction I think I will get the idea, and if the other people around here do not understand then that will be their problem."

"You are not quiet at all," she said, frowning more, her forehead starting to fold in on itself. "But you will do well to get used to doing as you are told, and I will not change the name."

"It will never fit," I said.

"Then I suppose we are in some sort of agreement, at the least," she said, and the look on her face made it clear that she was not going to say any more about the matter.

"Where will I be staying?" I asked.

"Oh," she said, "follow me."

She walked to the back of the house and opened the door to the new room I had noticed. I ran up behind her and looked into it.

The walls were the pale yellow of unpainted wood, and the furniture was, too. There was a bed, and its green sheets were the only thing in the room that was not wood-colored.

"Were you planning to paint?" I asked.

"Varnish, perhaps," she said. "Who needs anything else?" I remembered with something just un-faint enough to be horror that everything inside the house had been stained various shades of shiny brown, and the outside had weathered to grey.

"Oh," I said, thinking about how she had acted when I had not liked the name. "Is paint more expensive than varnish, perhaps?"

"Paint is too heavy for farmers' walls," she said. "And if we want for color, we need only go outside, and look up at the green leaves."

"There are colors other than green," I said, as quietly as I could, because it did not seem like the sort of thing that should stay locked up in my thoughts.

"Look at your hair, then," said Gaeren, starting to leave. "It is the farthest thing possible from green."

"At least," I whispered to the empty room, "it is not the color of _dirt."_

"Did you say something?" asked Gaeren, stopping in the doorway and smiling sweetly.

I turned around and smiled back. "What should I call you? Will your name do?"

"You could call me mother, if you like—"

" _No!"_

"Well!" she said. "It was nothing but a suggestion. Call me ma'am, then, or my name if you must."

To be honest, I would probably have forgotten her name by the time I woke up the next morning anyway. "Ma'am, then," I said seriously. "I will remember."

She laughed a little, which, though it was understandable considering who I was, I did not like very much. "No promises there!" she said, and left me alone in the new yellow room.

Fin


	6. Chapter Five (The Bug and Sir)

CHAPTER FIVE (THE BUG AND SIR)

Ma'am (as she had said I should call her) did not come back to the room to get me, so I stayed in it. I thought about all sorts of things, chiefly how to get money to buy paint. I had expensive tastes at the time— light purple would be nice for the walls, I thought then, and black for the bed-frame; blue for the desk and chair (and gold-leaf to decorate them, perhaps), white for the window-frame. Varnish would be best for the floor, of course, but it would have to be dark to look good with the purple walls.

There had been paint _everywhere_ in the place where the king of this place lived, and if a kingdom as poor as this one seemed could afford so much of it then it could not be _too_ expensive.

Ma'am had not sounded as if she liked paint much, but if I paid for it myself and only used it in my room then she would really not have a good reason to mind. It was, after all, my room, and even if I did not know what I _had_ been before they found me in the forest I was certain I had not been a farmer, so paint would not be too heavy for _my_ walls. Or my desk, or my bed, or my window-frame.

A massive bug flew in through the window, and I realized that it did not have glass in it. What had I been thinking? _None_ of the windows in Mirkwood had glass in them that I had seen. Why had I been expecting glass?

Whatever and whyever I had been thinking, there was a bug in my room now. I closed the shutters first, to keep any more from getting in. Then I turned my back to the wall, and looked at the room, waiting to see something moving.

There! There, near the desk that was new-wood-yellow right now but would look much better once it was blue and gold. It buzzed in circles in the air for the time it took me to blink thrice, then it landed. It was the ugliest beetle I had ever seen, with things hanging off of it that were not eight extra legs but looked enough like eight extra legs to make me want the whole thing gone as soon as possible.

I crept over, as slowly and softly as I could, my hands ready to smash it onto the table.

Closer… closer… close enough. I raised my arm, and—

Ma'am opened the door. The freakish bug, startled, flew away from the desk.

"I was about to catch it!" I said.

She was confused. "Catch what?"

I pointed at the bug. "Catch that!" I said. "It flew in through the window, and I was just about to squish it when you made it fly away."

"Squish it?" She frowned, still holding the doorknob. "You might just have put it outside."

"It was an ugly bug," I said. "And if all I did was set it outside, it might get back in again!"

Ma'am frowned more. "Come in for dinner," she said. "Naithion is back from the farms, and you might get a name you like better."

She turned around and went back into the main room, and I followed her. She sat in one of two dark varnished chairs beside a table that probably had food on it. A person who was probably Naithion sat in the other varnished chair.

He had the dusty-dirt grey-brown hair that just about everybody but the king seemed to have inherited in this place. He was taller than Ma'am, and probably taller than Lindwen, but not as tall as the person who was probably the king of the forest but was certainly not the king of the place I came from. Not nearly as tall as either of my real parents, of course. I had to guess at his height, though, for he _was_ sitting down. Standing up, he might have been taller or shorter.

It hardly mattered. He was a grown-up, so he was taller than me, and what else did I care about?

"What should I call you?" I asked.

Naithion looked up from his food. "What did she tell you to call her?" he asked, tilting his head at Ma'am.

"Ma'am," I said. "Or her name if I must, but—"

"Call me sir, then," he said, and went back to whatever he had been eating.

"What will you call me?" I asked, clambering into the only chair that was new-wood yellow. They must have had all these things built after agreeing to take care of me.

"Is it correct that you were found in the forest?" he asked.

The food was bread, and I had already taken a bite of a piece of it. I nodded.

"Taurwen, then," said Sir, and he ate the last of his bread.

Was it unusual for people here to talk this little? Lindwen liked to talk quite a bit, and the king talked a reasonable amount even if he talked strangely, and Ma'am seemed like she did not mind talking. Maybe it was strange. I would have to wait until I had met a few more people before making a decision, though.

"Ma'am said you were out in the fields before you came back," I said. "Were you plowing a field or planting radishes or something like that?"

"I was telling people how to plow," he said, "and I do not grow radishes." He left the table, not really looking at anything in particular.

Ma'am was doing something strange with her face. "Well!" she said, getting up from her chair. "It surely looks as if you like the bread!"

"Oh," I said, looking down at my now-empty plate. "Did I eat it all?"

"Yes," she said, laughing a little. "Did you not notice?"

"No," I said, squinting. "I suppose I liked it. Probably."

"Ah, well," she said, taking the plate. "There will be more tomorrow morning, and perhaps you can notice it then."

"Perhaps," I said, feeling far too tired for the few things I had done that day. Maybe Lindwen's pulling on my arm had had some effect? "I feel tired."

"The day has been long," she said, and she looked like she was planning to pick me up out of the chair and set me on the ground, so I scrambled out of the chair myself before she could get close enough. "You may go sleep in your room, if you like."

"I would like," I said, and I did.

Fin


	7. Chapter Six (Other Children)

CHAPTER SIX (OTHER CHILDREN)

The sunlight (that woke me up) had turned green by the time it got through the trees.

It made _me_ look green, which was strange, because I was used to not being green, but once I got away from the window I was normal-colored again, and to be honest I had mostly forgotten about it until now. Funny the things we remember and don't know it.

Ma'am and I broke our fast with bread, like she had said, though Sir had already left for the fields again. It was good enough, I supposed. Perhaps it had tasted better when I was hungry.

"Do you like it, then?" asked Ma'am. She looked at me expectantly.

I stuffed another bite in my mouth, and chewed it slowly so I could have more time to think of something to say, but by the time the bread finally disintegrated it tasted like all I could think of to say: nothing.

"Mnehh," I grunted, quietly enough that I hoped she would just interpret it as whatever she had wanted to hear, but she looked as if she had not heard it, so I had to say something else. "Nice. Thank you. May I go outside or something after I finish?"

"If you must," she said, retreating to the kitchen as she spoke. "Tell me first, and come back safe!"

"I am telling you that I am going outside, then," I said, before turning around and walking out the front door.

Outside was green, and it turned me green again. But outside was big, and surely there were people in it (that could talk _my_ language) and that was good enough to make getting turned green look like a very tiny inconvenience. Which it probably was, really, but even tiny inconveniences are still inconveniences.

There was, across the dirt path, a cluster of children that looked like all the other people in the forest. Except smaller, of course. A number of them were smaller than me, even.

"Good morning!" I called out, running across to them. They all looked at me like I was a spider.

"Good morning," said the tallest of them hesitantly.

"Who are you?" asked the shortest.

"Well, I forgot my name," I said. "But Sir called me Taurwen, and I like that better than what Ma'am called me, at least, so I suppose you may call me that."

"Ma'am and sir?" said one of the middle-height children. "Who do you mean by that?"

"I think their names were Caerwen and Maithion," I said, with the overwhelming confidence of a little child who has apparently forgotten her own name and is not sure about anything anymore.

"You mean Gaeren and Naithion," said another middle-height, very sarcastically. "They are _only_ taking care of you, you might have the decency to remember their names."

"I will remember their names when I can remember my own!" I said, my face heating up.

"We can all remember our names," said the same middle-height. "Whatever is wrong with you that you cannot remember yours?"

"I hit my head," I said, resolving to hit theirs if they did not stop blabbering. "And might we not talk about something else? It gets tiresome, everybody asking about the same thing."

"Why does your hair look like a carrot?" squeaked the shortest.

"It does not!" I shouted, and regretted it when multiple adults looked over, concerned. "It does not," I told him, more quietly this time. "I am not sure what it does look like, to tell the truth, but it does _not_ look like a carrot. Carrots are undignified."

"And what makes you _not_ undignified?" asked the sarcastic middle-height. "My big sister says people who hit their heads on things are the most undignified people in the whole world!"

"Well, whoever did she say that about?" I asked. "It could hardly have been me, because nobody but the healers knew that I had hit my head until now! And me, of course, but that is beside the point."

The sarcastic middle-height flushed, and said something I could not hear but was probably, extrapolating from context, a very mumbly, " _Me."_ Or she could have been trying to lie, but she seemed so far like an _honest_ kind of sarcastic middle-height child. Even if she did try to lie I got the sense that it would mostly fail.

"And I asked to talk about something else," I said, crossing my arms. "If you must always come back to that I will find someone else to talk to."

"Stop being ridiculous, Carcostel," said the second-tallest of them. "Everybody hits their head sometimes, and nobody wants to talk about it."

"Yes," I said, "stop being ridiculous."

The second-tallest rolled her eyes, probably at somebody who I could not see that was not me. "When did you start living in Gaeren and Naithion's house?" she asked me, which was not quite what I wanted to talk about even if it was better than talking about how I hit my head.

"Yesterday," I said. "I was in the healers' rooms before that."

She nodded. "I thought so."

Either these were dreadfully boring children, _I_ was a dreadfully boring child, or the strangeness of the whole situation had driven all the interesting things to talk about clean out of everybody's heads. "A hideous bug flew into my room last night before dinner," I said in an attempt to start a conversation worthy of the name. "It had the normal number of legs for a flying bug, I think, but there were all sorts of strange things hanging off it that made it look like it had _fourteen_ legs. It was big, too. Are those common here? Are they all that big?"

The sarcastic middle-height girl whose name was apparently Carcostel had been wandering slowly and vaguely away from me, but at that she turned around. "You mean a spiderbeetle?" she asked, grinning. "I heard those only come from the darkest parts of the forest, where nobody but the guard ever goes. Half beetle, half spider… and not the normal kind of spider either. The big kind, that the guard has to kill with arrows and spears. My brother joined the guard last winter, and he says—"

"Stuff and nonsense," said the second-tallest whose name I did not know. "Spiderbeetles are hard to kill, to be sure, but they only _look_ like spiders."

"Well," said Carcostel, "My brother says he found a whole nest of spiderbeetle eggs, and none of the beetles hovering around it were spiderbeetles, and when somebody in his squad poked the nest with her axe-handle a whole lot of big spiders jumped out of the bushes and attacked them, and the one who poked the nest almost had her arm bitten off, and she had to stay in the healer's rooms for a whole season because of all the spider poison, and—"

"What does she look like?" I asked. "Maybe I saw her while I was in the healers' rooms."

"That was back in _spring,"_ said Carcostel, her tone of voice making it very clear what she thought of my intelligence. "This is summer."

"Well, how was I to know that?" I asked, and I was _not_ shouting, even if I was talking a little bit louder than usual to make my point. "Your brother only joined the guard in winter, or at least you said he did, and how was I to know he would be going into the 'darkest parts of the forest' by spring? And how am I to know what summer looks like here when I only just got out of that horrible cave your silly king lives in, and _furthermore—_ "

"Go back inside then, if you like outside so little!" shouted Carcostel. "You won't need to know anything about summer _then."_

This was an insult indeed, and it took great personal strength to keep myself from bursting into a tiny fury of fingernails and teeth. "Well!" I said. "The same to you, then. No doubt the people who have had to put up with you will be glad."

"Oh, stop it," said the tallest of them all. "If you keep shouting we will all get in trouble."

"I am not inclined to care," said Carcostel, glaring at me.

"I am not inclined to lay down and let you stomp all over me," I said, glaring back. I felt very much like all my insides would burst into flame at the slightest provocation.

"Talking is not stomping," said Carcostel, looking down her nose at me— she could not have been more than an inch taller than me, but disadvantaged as I was I could only retaliate with a kind of squinty glare.

"It was a _metaphor,"_ I said, "if you know what that is."

"I did not think _you_ did!" she said, which was the highest form of absurdity to which I had ever been witness. "I only thought that hit to your head must have shaken up the words you knew, and was kindly correcting what would have been an embarrassing mistake in other company—"

"Go eat a beetle," I said.

Carcostel stared into my eyes, her own eyes so nearly shut I could not see the dark circles in the middle. She knelt down, holding the stare, and picked a small bug off the ground.

She ate it.

I began to feel excruciatingly cold and hot by turns, my mind casting about for something to say.

"That was not a beetle," I said, and immediately began to chew on the inside of my mouth, for it _had_ been a beetle, and a particularly vile-looking one at that.

Evidently Carcostel agreed; she let out an animalistic screech and swung her fist toward my face.

Something inside me burst asunder, and I let out a screech of my own, doing my honest best to pummel her into the ground.

A surprising number of the other children joined the fray, though I had no idea exactly how many— most without any particular allegiance, I think, since Carcostel took some blows that were not mine. But the tide of the fight was not turning in my favor, and though I did what I could, I began to feel that I was losing a great deal of hair.

" _Stop_ that this instant!" shouted a random adult, beginning to drag children away from the pile. I was one of them― I considered putting up a fight, but the adult was much bigger than me and I could not think of any way it would actually improve my situation. While I thought, the adult set me down some distance away from the pile and went back to get another child.

I squinted at the pile, trying to determine how quickly my hair would recover. I could, I thought, go back to defend my honor; but I had not been winning. The path of discretion, then— I ran toward Ma'am and Sir's house, steadfastly ignoring the shouts that followed me.

Fin


	8. Chapter Seven (A Kind of Reckoning)

CHAPTER SEVEN

 **A Kind of Reckoning**

I arrived safely enough. My dress was in a terrible state, but it was the hideous one the hospital had given me, so I cared very little. And of course it was already brown! Surely the dirt could not stain it _noticeably._

The door to Ma'am and Sir's house was not locked. I entered (letting a few beetles in as an unfortunate result), and found Ma'am sitting by a window. She was mending a pair of shoes, a long, thick needle in her hand, and seemed to be occupied with some particularly difficult stitch— she had brought the work very close to her face, and her eyes did not even flicker from it as I entered.

"Who is it?" she asked, although I doubted she would actually pay attention to the answer unless it was particularly alarming.

"It is I," I said, and then remembered that the language tutor had said nobody _really_ talked like that. " Me. It is me."

She did not look up, but made an unimpressed expression. "I hardly know the voice of every child in Kingsglade," she said.

"I am the girl who lives here now," I said, a little snippily. It was a very roundabout way of introducing myself, I know. But the more I thought about the new names the more I loathed them. Perhaps I could persuade the other children to call me something else, once the fight had been forgiven— but then I could not even _think_ of anything good, and name-wise I would be quite at their mercy—

"Then you are Tíniel?" She glanced up at me, although not long enough to fully observe the state of my dress.

Of course I was not, but the tone of her voice smacked suspiciously of reprimand. I bit my tongue and started to move toward my room.

Ma'am set aside the shoes, slowly, pressing her mouth into a thin, straight line. When she looked at me, however, her expression changed entirely. "What _happened_ to you?" she asked.

"I was playing," I said, which was not technically a lie. I had found I liked fighting, just a little bit.

"Really," she said. Somehow, I got the impression that she did not truly believe me.

"Really!" I said. "And since that is settled, what ought I to do with my dress?"

She leaned against the chair's back, crossing her arms. "Wear it," she said, deliberately, "until the end of the day. And have more care on the morrow, Tíniel."

I _hated_ that name and I _hated_ her and the more I looked at the beetle crawling across the floor the more I hated it too. If I had my way, the beetle would have flown up and bitten Ma'am in the back of her knee— then both of them would know how angry I was. And of course I would have utterly destroyed the name from the memory of everybody who had chanced to hear it. Even as things stood, though, perhaps I could do something.

"Call me something else," I said.

"What was that?" she asked, twitching one of her eyebrows. At the time I thought she had truly not heard me clearly, but now I suppose she must have been giving me a chance to amend what I had said.

"Call me something else," I said, enunciating the words more clearly and doing my best to suppress my accent. "At the very least you could come up with a name that sounds like an elf's name and not a horse's or a cat's. I could settle for a nonsense meaning as long as it sounds dignified!"

"But you are not very dignified," she said. "You are small, and you seem to enjoy shouting for the sake of shouting. A dignified name would not suit you."

"Well!" I said. "I will hardly be small forever, unless you intend to work some horrible spell upon me! And to be a grown elf with a child's name would be more than I could bear."

"It is not so bad a name as all that," she said— an addendum of 'you ridiculous creature' seemed very much to be implied. "And I have better things to do than argue with a child." She picked up the shoes and needle again, apparently determined to ignore everything I had said.

"Why," I said, "you simply do not care to think of anything else! I do wish the people who work for the king had given me to somebody who is in some way intelligent."

This last of my lamentations made her very angry indeed. "Have a care how you speak to your elders," she said, her eyes narrowed.

"I will have a care to speak the truth," I said, shaking with indignation.

Saying anything at all would have been a grave mistake, but saying that in particular was probably among the worst things I could have done. Ma'am's face turned a color paler than I could remember ever seeing on an elf. She opened her mouth, then closed it without saying anything.

She did this a few more times, and in hindsight it would have been a good time to retreat; but that might have made her more angry, especially if I had left the house again. I suppose there is no way to know. What actually happened was this: I watched, fascinated, as she tried to decide what to do.

At last she spoke. "That is— that— that may be what you think the truth is, but it very well is not! And I ought to know better than you—" at this point she began to regain her composure— "for I have been alive far longer, and had time to learn more things. In any event I hardly think you are qualified to know what makes a Sindarin name bad or good, considering that you had never even heard the language two months ago."

She did make good points. It was my turn to be dumbfounded, although at least I was able to keep my mouth safely shut. (I had not forgotten the beetles.)

Ma'am finished with the shoes, and stood to put them away. A beetle crawled across the place where she had been sitting. "Go tidy your room," she said. "The sheets are dreadfully mussed."

"If I must," I said, and I turned on my heel to go.

Fin


End file.
